That's Just Bad Luck, Ain't It?
by Bossy Mossy
Summary: A collection of Flinx Next Gen drabbles and headcanons. Fluff, drama, angst, the whole nine yards.
1. Too Late

...Introducing my Flinx OC, Bartholomew Wallace West, also known as Barry. For more information you can check out his Tumblr, Barrymeinblack. This will just be a collection of drabbles and snippets from his head.

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><p>Wally tries. He really tries, but it's too late.<p>

When the house is nearly empty on weekends, Jai spending the night with one of his friends and Irey all dressed up and blushing, having left hours earlier for a dance that he was sure he'd hear all about later, it's too late.

It's too late when he tries to talk to Barry, certainly more his mother's son than Wally's, and maybe he'd been avoiding the squared shoulders and the wayward glances for too long. Maybe he'd been avoiding the way his son really _did_ resemble himself.

Maybe he hadn't realized just how much his goofy, eighteen-year-old son had in common with himself, because he'd been too busy with his younger siblings.

But it was too late, and Wally realized this when he finally really saw his son one night, hand in his letter man pocket, chevrons proudly proclaimed on one shoulder and swinging his lanyard in his other hand, eyes half-closed. It was nearly three in the morning, and he'd been expecting Irey home over an hour ago.

"What'cha doing up so late, Bear?"

He tried to ignore the square of his shoulders, he tried to ignore the way his son's jaw set and the way he simply adverted his gaze.

"Nothin'," he murmured, and the sound of faint metal clinking took over the air around them, his lanyard stilling against his hip. "Gonna go get some ice cream with Dami. The usual."

"At three in the morning?"

He tried to overlook the way Barry's knuckles turned white, and maybe that was his greatest fault, overlooking things, but he couldn't overlook or disregard the way his lip curled and his teeth bared, defensive, hostile.

"Jesus Christ, dad. Just leave me be. Don't you got some sidekicks to be worrying about?"

"What's gotten into you?"

The air stilled, silent in the dark house. An info commercial blared on the television in front of Wally, bleaching his face in colors and hues and mottling the colors in his eyes, but no amount of mottling could rid the disgust in his son's eyes.

And it's too late to take back those words, Wally realizes, as soon as the lanyard tightens in his son's hand and his mouth opens and words began to tumble from his mouth, angry and loud and with far more vigor and emotion than he'd ever heard from his son.

For a moment, he might have considered it ironic, bittersweet almost. After all, he _was_ his father's son in that aspect, in the way he threaded his words, passionate and hot-headed.

"I'm so fucking _tired_ of being on the back burner and you thinking it's _okay_ because I'm not fast."

His words were acidic, booming and startling.

"I'm sick of you and Irey and Jai and you thinking that it's _okay_ to mentor them and not me. Christ, did you not realize that I'd like to be a sidekick too? That maybe, you know, I'm your son _too_ and I loved you just as much as those brats did, even though we didn't have a lot in common?"

"I never said you couldn't be -"

"_You never fucking asked!"_ His face was red, and Wally tried not to notice the streaks on his son's face. "Holy shit, dad, was it that hard to realize that you've got a third child and maybe it's a little narrow minded to _not_ even offer? It was like you didn't even think I could step up and handle it. You don't even _know_ how strong I am. I know, I know, I can't keep up and I'm not fast, but neither is mom and you put up with her. You slow down for her. Why couldn't you slow down for once for me?"

His chest was heaving, teeth bared, and Wally realized Barry had yanked his hat off of his head in anger; there was an abrupt sound of anguish, his hat flying across the room, and the way it landed on the floor was the direct inverse of the expression on his face.

And suddenly his strong teenage son crumpled and the hatred dissipated, dissolving into sniffles and loud sobs and something his dad didn't want to identify, didn't want to realize.

"Christ, dad. It… it wasn't that hard. I'm not that hard to keep up with."

And for a moment, Wally is still, unmoving, silent, allowing the television screen to mottle his expression and twist his face and he didn't mind, staring at his pink-faced son and trying to realize where he went wrong.

"Barry -"

"S'too late, dad," Barry said softly, his words broken and his lanyard still clasp in his fist, and with a shuddering sigh he walked to the front foor. "S'too late."

Wally never realized someone like him, faster than a blink and the speed of light, could ever be late for anything, but he had been.


	2. Batman

Damian and Barry are bff's. That is all.

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><p>"Where the fuck was Batman?"<p>

"I don't _know_, West." His voice was raspy, weak. "I don't know."

His words weren't comforting in the slightest, and for a moment, all I could remember was the diner.

That damned diner from Star City, with that damned robber and his gun and my inability to protect myself, and it'd happened again, except the guy didn't have a gun.

And I wasn't just protecting myself. There was Damian, beaten at his own game and his own abilities, but not nearly as much as I was. Not a _fraction_ of what I'd been. Sure, he'd been foolish before, jumping into battle before I could, but this time… this time, I'd been the foolish one.

I attracted bad luck, and I suppose the stars decided that I hadn't had enough in my life lately, because that fucker damned near…

I didn't want to think about it. I didn't. I wasn't dead, so none of this mattered.

"You - you okay, Dami?"

"Yeah," he responded, his voice hushed, but I knew it wasn't out of choice. "How about you, Bear?"

We never spoke like this. We were never this tender nor this loving, and I knew he was afraid and concerned, just as I was, if not more so. He'd been at this longer than I had - been working Gotham longer than I ever would - but he was still only fifteen and I was still only seventeen and we could have gotten killed.

"I…I don't know. I don't want to look."

"Can you stand?"

"…I don't know."

"Get the fuck up, West."

I couldn't help but chuckle; that was the Damian I knew, replacing his emotions with callous words, unused to being so kind and expressive. With shaking limbs and throbbing knees, I staggered to my feet, examining the boy sitting up against the alley way's brick wall.

He'd be fine. He was the goddamned Batman's son, for Christ's sake. Judging by the way he was sitting and the blood on the side of his lip, he'd maybe cracked a rib and bruised his lungs, but he would be fine.

"You're a pussy if you think you're injured, West."

I sighed, glancing down at myself, taking a mental inventory. My shoes were scuffed, my shorts torn, a huge hole causing the hem to dangle by a few courageous threads unwilling to give out. My knees were scraped to a hellish degree - I'd fallen, a rookie mistake, and I was a rookie, so who was to blame? It wouldn't 've been so bad if the guy didn't grab my hood and yank me across the pavement.

My face was bruising, I could feel the blood thrumming in my cheek, a sensation far too familiar for my liking. My ribs were fine, my lungs were fine as I breathed in, and a quick look at my hands…

I think my retching proved humorous for Damian; it was almost a little comforting to me, proving that I was just human. I made mistakes. I was allowed to make mistakes.

I had four mistakes on my hands, my fingers bent at angles that made me shudder and vomit, and the disgusting feeling of my shoulder being knocked out of place was enough to make me want to dry-heave.

Why not? My dinner was already on the alley's floor. I didn't have much else to lose.

"We'll be fine, Wayne," I wheezed, making my way over to the boy and offering him a hand, glancing away from the mal-shaped digits. "We'll be fine."

He took my hand, and the pain I felt was enough to remind me that mistakes were not going to be allowed any further.

Mistakes cost lives, and I didn't want to think about how close I could have come to losing my best friend, even as he thumped me on the back and I let out a shout of pain.

I couldn't risk it. Any of it.

I didn't want to think about it.


	3. Snow

"Christ, it's snowing."

"What, does it not snow in Central?"

"Not… not as badly as here. _Nearly_ not as much as here."

Damian snorted, and Barry couldn't rip his gaze from the sky even if it would cost him his life. Gotham's perpetually gray skies seemed to be draining, the clouds letting loose flakes of snow, drifting and fluttering and coating his clothes and his skin, and for a moment, Barry was certain it was the friendliest he'd ever seen Gotham.

Everything was less threatening when covered in a layer of white, blanketing the city and it's landmarks and everything, and judging by the noise his friend had made, it wasn't such a luxury for him. It was still Gotham to Damian, still just as dangerous and dark as usual, but for once, Barry wanted to believe it wasn't.

The silence was too innocent, the clouds were too light a shade, the cars going too slow.

For a moment, he wondered when the city's innocence had worn off for Damian, and with that thought he smiled at the boy.

"Let's go build somethin' while it lasts."


	4. Muffled

A prompt.

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><p>"They're asleep, Damian. Calm the fuck down. …No I <em>didn<em>'_t _fall asleep."

His voice was thick with sleep, rubbing at his eyes as he tripped out of bed. His sweats, a tee and his varsity jacket would have to do - there wasn't a way in hell he was gonna actually get dressed for the bossy kid just so they could go get food.

Barry yawned as he pulled his Vans on over bare feet, making painstakingly sure his Cross Country sweats fell just right to hide any of the pale skin that may be showing, before tugging his hat and his jacket on.  
>"Are you ready or not, West?"<p>

"I'll be ready soon. Swear. I'll pay for your ice cream."

"…Fine."

Barry chortled, sticking his car keys in his pocket and buttoning the bottom of his jacket, fingers stilling at what sounded like something knocking against wood. There was a moment of silence as the boy simply held his cellphone between his ear and his shoulder, puzzled.

"…You heard that too, didn't ya?" Barry murmured.

"Didn't hear _nothin_', West."

"I swear, I heard some-"

The noise again, louder this time, and a second time. It took Barry several seconds to realize what he had heard - what he was _hearing _- and it seemed the boy on the other end of his call heard it as well.

"The _fuck_?"

Barry made an indistinguishable noise at the back of his throat, making his way out of his room and out his front door with a speed that could only be compared to his father's, and it wasn't until he was outside in the cold, the pink-nosed Wayne standing across the street, that he let his thoughts go.

"We are going to go to a party, get shitfaced drunk, and never remembering this night ever, ever again. Forget the damned ice cream. I need a _drink_."

Damian only chortled at the pink-tinted expression on his friend's face.


	5. Harper

In which Barry meets Lian for the first time.

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><p>"Someone's gotta be the anti-hero."<p>

She made me want to wretch. Full-force vomit, heaves and tears, retching. She was disgusting and her hair was the most putrid shade of black - if there is even such a thing as a shade of black, but I knew better by just looking at her, because her hair wasn't _just _black, it had vermillion hues scattered throughout courtesy of her father - and the small smile on her face was enough to make me want to curl my lip.

"I am not a fucking_ anti-hero_." I snarled.

"Sure you aren't," she said, bemused, her arms crossing over her chest. That was the only thing on her that impressed me; her arms, not her breasts, that is (not like she had any, anyway. Flat as a board. Disgusting and unfeminine.) they were muscular and well-defined and her elbows jutted out at such an angle that I knew would be bruise-inducing if she happened to hit me with one of them. Her shoulders curved and her forearms were thick, and it was a sign of how hard she worked.

It was still awful and horrid, and on her, they fit, but that didn't make them okay. She was a woman, for Christ's sake, and even Mom wasn't as grotesquely toned as this girl was. I understood why - she couldn't have been any taller than five foot and obviously hadn't hit her growth spurt yet, and maybe once that happened she'd turn into a normal human female, but until then she was just this ugly-ass troll that I hated to deal with.

"What would you define yourself as, then?" she asked, her head tilted, her off-center ponytail following the angle and splaying onto her shoulder. Her arms moved - always moving, never still, something I already hated from Irey and Jai. She was fidgety and it was unnerving and annoying, and I watched as she put her hands on her waist (what fucking waist? She's about as shapeless as a toilet paper roll.) and her elbows jutted out at that deathly angle.

"I'm not _anything_. I'm just Barry," I snapped, my teeth bared, my jaw aching. "_Christ_, Harper. Could you get any more annoying?"

That smile, sweet and twisting and sick, there had to be an ulterior motive under it, under the dimple on her cheek and the way her bangs shuttered across her forehead and how her ponytail fanned out on the side of her neck and around her jawbone -

"Oh, you're so cute when you're flustered," she said, and with a fluidity that, compared to my mother's, was disgustingly rigid and choppy, she turned her body and then her head, her hair whipping behind her and bouncing as she walked away with those words looming in the air.

A light bulb ruptured above my head and sent shatters of glass into my hat.

_"Damn it!"_


	6. Morality

He couldn't handle it. He couldn't fucking _handle _it.

Who was _he _to distinguish what was right and what was wrong? Why was he supposed to fight these battles for people and decide who was morally right and morally wrong?

He couldn't. Barry didn't want to think about the dark alleys on his walks home from school or the looming shadows when he'd decide to take a walk at night, or the gunfire he could distantly hear in the neighborhood a few miles down the road. He didn't want to think about it.

But he did and it loomed in his mind and swirled, and not even the most complex algebraic expressions or the complicated scientific formulas would silence the nagging question in his mind, the constant reasoning and _why aren't I good_ and _why the fuck should I waste my time on people who don't give a shit?_

He didn't want to think about it. Not when he came too close to a fight at school, the altercation taking place right in front of him, seemingly one-sided. He tried not to think about it while the football player, towering, thick, stocky, one hand on the smaller boy's shirt collar and the other slinging punches and blood -

The blood -

He didn't want to think about it, he didn't want to think about it, so he put on his headphones and let the roaring, angry music drown out the pained grunts and carnal growls and the gasps and encouraging cries around him, suddenly taking a turn and walking straight out of the school. Walking away from the problem, the scene, straight out of Central, and even when night fell and the battery to his music player died, he continued onwards.

He didn't want to think about it.


End file.
